Hotel Highlights

Trendy restaurant

Access to the only private park in Manhattan

Two art-filled scenester cocktail bars

Overview

A beguiling muddle of styles, colours and spaces, the boho Gramercy Park Hotel is clearly a product of an idiosyncratic imagination. Exposed brickwork stands alongside bare wood, lush scarlet drapes tickle stark black-leather furniture, and Louis XV chairs sit beneath works by Cy Twombly and Damien Hirst. Add to this a wonderful East Side location and access to the city’s only private park – where children can play freely – and you’ve got a place as edgy, cool and unclassifiable as New York City itself.

Smith Extra

Here's what you get for booking Gramercy Park Hotel with us:

Book a Lexington Premier King or higher for three nights or more and receive free room service breakfast for two; All other guests get free WiFi

More details

At the hotel

Our favourite rooms

The Lexington Premier King comes with its own seating area, filled with quirky, well-chosen pieces of furniture from all over the world, and superb views of Lexington Avenue. If you feel like splurging, then go for the Penthouse – it comes with its own kitchen, dining room and library.

Packing tips

Grab your well-worn copy if Thoreau or Whitman to read while communing with nature in Gramercy Park across the street from the hotel. Guests are among the few New Yorkers given access to this enviable private sanctuary smack dab in the middle of the urban jungle.

Children

Kids are made very welcome at Gramercy Park – there’s a secure private park for them to play in, and parents can pick up special children’s robes and family-friendly DVDs from the concierge. Extra beds and cots are available, as are babysitters.

Food & Drink

◐View Gallery

Hotel Restaurant

The hotel's restaurant is Danny Meyer's Italian trattoria Maialino. Located on the first floor, the eatery is kitted out with wooden floors and warm colours, and has dazzling views of Gramercy Park. Maialino is a coffee bar by morning, restaurant by day and wine bar by night, excelling in delicious small plates of food. There is also a private dining room for up to 20.

Hotel Bar

The Rose Bar and the Jade Bar are both popular NYC hangouts, offering the city’s gilded youth the chance to quaff cocktails by candlelight, while being overlooked by Warhols and Basquiats from the wall.

Room service

Smith Insider

Dress code

Local Guide

Worth getting out of bed for

For a guide to New York City and a listing of its hottest bars, restaurants and clubs, as well as tips on what to get up to while you're in town, click here.

Local cafés

Friend of the Farmer at 77 Irving Place (+1 212 477 2188) is a little patch of the country a hop from Gramercy Park. Chintzy wallpaper and cutesy farmhouse knick-knacks make it a homely antidote to the hurly burly of Manhattan, and this rustic purveyor of pumpkin pancakes and heartier fare such as chicken pot pie provides the perfect rendezvous for brunch (served at weekends, 8.30am–3.30pm).

Gramercy Park Hotel

2 Lexington Avenue, New York 10010, United States

Planes

JFK and Newark airports are between 25–35 minutes away by car (allow for traffic at busy times).

Trains

Grand Central Station is a five-minute drive down Park Avenue. From here, you'll be able to board Amtrak (www.amtrak.com) services to other destinations all over the USA. Penn Station is around the same distance – jump on the Long Island Rail Road (www.lirr.org) to escape to the Hamptons.

Automobiles

From JFK, take the Van Wyck Expressway then the Long Island Expressway, before heading over towards Murray Hill in Manhattan on the Queens Midtown Expressway. Parking at the hotel costs $55–$65 a night. A valet service is available.

Reviews

Anonymous review

The prospect of a long weekend in New York in itself brings shivers of excitement. Now add to that the thrill of staying in an exciting new Manhattan hotel creted by the godfather of boutique boltholes – Ian Schrager’s Gramercy Park Hotel – and you've got a very exciting package. Schrager has been a personal hero of mine ever since I worked on London’s club scene &ndash…

Gramercy Park Hotel

Anonymous review by Juliet Kinsman, On-the-go editor

The prospect of a long weekend in New York in itself brings shivers of excitement. Now add to that the thrill of staying in an exciting new Manhattan hotel creted by the godfather of boutique boltholes – Ian Schrager’s Gramercy Park Hotel – and you've got a very exciting package. Schrager has been a personal hero of mine ever since I worked on London’s club scene – thanks to his heady Studio 54 days, he's nightclub royalty as well as hotel god. This particular hotel is the fruit of his collaboration with Academy Award-nominated director, Julian Schnabel. To borrow Chandler Bing's famous Friends-featured inflection of incredulity – could a hotel be any more now?

Back in the Nineties, a naughty extravagance for this Mrs Smith would have been to go out clubbing, checking into one of Schrager’s hip hotels to complete a night of hedonistic escapism in my home city. Oh, how times have changed. I’ve long since traded disco balls for duvets and, now, here in NYC, and heavily pregnant, my dance-floor glory days seem centuries past. I’m nearer to being someone’s embarrassing mum at a wedding than a club chick throwing some shapes.

Just as I’m reinventing my own lifestyle, here’s Mr Schrager doing the same for the luxury boutique hotel – all over again. Utter the words ‘Gramercy Park Hotel’ to the driver of one of those yellow taxi-cabs, and chances are they’ll be very familiar with this limestone building off Lexington. After all, this establishment was the favourite haunt of such luminaries as baseballing legend Babe Ruth and Hollywood hero Humphrey Bogart. Head to its chic restyled bar now, and nursing an exotic cocktail alongside you is likely to be one of today’s darlings of the paparazzi.

From the moment this Mr & Mrs Smith pair stepped foot in the revamped Gramercy Park Hotel, we knew we’d found the sexiest dirty-weekend rendezvous imaginable. Artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel’s influence is palpable throughout – dark, eccentric and heavily perfumed, it isn’t just a visual sensation, but an olfactory one. Even the air is sweetly scented. The foyer is pure theatre: above our heads, suspended from the Cypress-beamed ceiling, was a huge Venetian-glass chandelier. Forget common-or-garden marble flooring for this five-star retreat – here, we had Moroccan floor tiles and a French rug, hand-woven with a mediaeval-looking design, to pad across en route to the front desk. A huge Cy Twombly painting provides a nod to the 20th century. As for that heavenly smell – it’s a spicy scent from perfumier Le Labo, created especially for GPH (as its known to New York’s in-crowd), and it’s blowing the ooh-là-là factor through the roof.

Genuinely on tenterhooks to find out what surprises were in store, we hotfooted it to our suite. In keeping with the hotel’s louche heritage, the lighting is low-level and moody. And when you’ve just done a long-haul at six-months pregnant, trust me: you’re grateful for any soft-focus effects. I loved the sultry darkness of our boudoir, which, thanks to an imaginative decor, was a world away from its modern-day Manhattan location. Deep cerulean walls, port-tinted velvet, tapestry chairs, hand-stitched leather – this building may be steeped in recent history, but the rich hues of its interiors transport you to back to the Renaissance. Even the vast velvet bedheads are stitched with gold and reminiscent of a courtly wall hanging. (Obviously, Mr Smith was more taken with the cut-crystal glasses in the drinking cabinet and the fully loaded iPod he’d borrowed from the concierge than my blathering on about how Michelangelo would have approved of the colour scheme.)

As for the bathrooms, at Gramercy Park Hotel ‘attention to detail’ is a way of life. (And smarty-pants who know their way around a new-fangled dimmer switch will even be able to boost the bulbs to interrogation-bright levels.) Forget middle-of-the-road Molton Brown: the best-in-class approach to the toiletries here involved asking staff on a style magazine to recommend a few of their favourite products. As a result, the bathroom boasts Hamadi organic shampoo and conditioner, Mario Badescu body lotion and Håkansson skincare. Resisting the temptation to road-test the Japanese tub big enough for two, we planned the rest of the day’s recce.

Schrager was the inventor of ‘lobby socialising’, so it’s no surprise to discover that the Rose Bar and the Jade Bar are Manhattan’s hottest see-and-be-seen cocktail lounges. But, as it was a bit early for boozing, we settled on a quick look at the private roof club and garden, which exudes a gentlemen’s club charm. On the ground floor, Wakiya restaurant provides Northern Chinese cuisine courtesy of Yuji Wakiya, a Japanese chef mentored by Nobu Matsuhisa and being hailed the new Alan Yau. All terribly chic, obviously, especially when served up in a setting styled by French designers Gilles et Boissier – but, I thought to myself, we are in New York, I’m up the duff, and I’m having cravings. For a full American breakfast. With extra maple syrup. At 3pm. And that’s one of the best things about being in NYC – you can eat whatever you want, whenever you want. In extra-large portions. Heaven (even if you’re not eating for two).

Mr Smith arched an eyebrow and suggested we at least book a table for the in-house Asian sensation for supper, and follow it up with a nightcap in the exclusive club at the top of the building. Here we were, excited about being at one of the most vibrant city-slicker stays in the world, a hotel where most guests probably earmark the Rose Bar for a pineapple and cinammon mojito, and Wakiya for delicious dim sum, and I want eggs over easy served in iron skillet. Admittedly, you’re not as likely to bump into a member of the Rolling Stones or one of the latest celebrity-mag cover stars at a rustic café called Friend of a Farmer, but what a girl wants in New York, a girl gets. And rubbing shoulders with so many beautiful people in a place so achingly cool sure works up an appetite…

The Guestbook

Whenever you book a stay at a Smith hotel with us, we'll invite you to review it when you get back. Read what other Smith members had to say in Gramercy Park Hotel's Guestbook below.

Serhat

BlackSmith

Stayed on
20 Dec 2014

We loved

Breakfast, spacious rooms, bed and bed linens, cool atmosphere.

Don’t expect

Furniture could be renewed, some were worn out.

Rating:
6/10 stars

Reidar

BlackSmith

Stayed on
29 Oct 2014

We loved

The hotel is in a very good location... You can't beat a private park with your own key and a view of the Chrysler building on the other end of your avenue.

Don’t expect

Some of the rooms and public areas show some wear and tear. In this category and price range everything needs to be spotless, but is not.

Rating:
7/10 stars

T Richard

SilverSmith

Stayed on
26 Apr 2014

We loved

This was our second stay at Gramercy and equally enjoyable. It's a peaceful haven in busy Midtown. The bar and restaurant offer excellent fare at reasonable prices.

T Richard

SilverSmith

Stayed on
11 May 2013

We loved

Peace in the centre of Manhattan; a super location – convenient, but next to Gramercy Park… ,o through traffic, no sirens; just perfect. The restaurant is great, informal and friendly and did the best suckling pig I've had in a long time, swilled down with a great '83 Brunello di Montepulciano. The room was compact but beautifully furnished and spotlessly presented.

Don’t expect

Nothing.

Rating:
10/10 stars

Price information

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